


Burning

by songofsunset



Series: Redshirts (Wizard Trek) [2]
Category: Star Trek, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Randall sits on a log and watches the fire burn."</p><p>Basically, someone in the YW slackchat said "it is hard for life to happen in fire" and then this happened.</p><p>These are the same characters from A Redshirt Story, so technically this is set in Star Trek and they're on an away mission, but that wasn't the point here so I didn't play it up :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning

The fire burns.

The night is dark and the woods buzz with life, and the fire in its ring of stones casts itself up and up and up into the sky.

Randall sits on a log and watches the fire burn.

It's muggy out, not the best night for a campfire, but missions are camping trips and sometimes you just have to make do.

“Here,” Jans says, handing Randall an appallingly purple stick with two marshmallows skewered on the end. “The wood isn’t poisonous or anything, I checked.”

“Where did you even get marshmallows on an away mission?” Randall asks. “Isn’t that like, extraneous supplies or something?”

“I synthesized some before I left. I told Commander Spock that they were Essential Camping Materials,” Jans says, awkwardly making air quotes while jamming marshmallows onto his own stick, ”And he raised his eyebrow at me but didn’t call me out on it, so I’m calling it a win.”

“Fair enough,” Randall says, and gets down to the important task of roasting marshmallows.

~~~

Later, when the fire is burned down to embers, Randall stares into the shimmering glow at the heart and sees… whispers. Soft murmurs like you hear from an ant mound, or a beehive, or a patch of particularly determined grass.

He looks around, but Jans is gently snoring over in the tent, and no one else is nearby. He leans towards the fire, feeling the skin of his face tighten in the heat.

“Dai Stiho,” he whispers, and has to lean back as the embers flare up in what seems to be surprise.

 _here hERE h ere whO HERE_ the murmurs chorus and Randall wonders at the strange harmony of it, like music, but music in a system foreign to earth, all muted dissonances and half-tones.

“Are you the fire?” he asks, using the speech in hopes he will be understood. The embers flicker.

_fire f IRE fire home hOME lightwarmthburnHOME_

“So you live in the fire? It’s your home?” He gets a general chorus of assent, and the embers flare again, sending sparks into the air. “What are you?” he asks, and is not at all prepared for the rush of _LIVE FEED BURNLIVEFEEDBURN_ that sings to him from whatever life he has found in the remains of his campfire.

“I’m Randall,” he says. “Do you have a name?”

The whispers consult one another. A log crackles, and a spark flies up from the fire and floats just a handspan away from his face.

 _we are burning,_ it says, and then goes dark. Randall can faintly see the piece of ash drifting away in the current of heat from the fire, but loses it in the darkness. He looks up, and watches other glimmers above him, going dark and silent one by one.

“You are- burning?” he asks, and gazes back down into the fire’s molten glow. “Do you want to keep burning? Are you happy with this?”

 _we are_ ** _Burning_** , the whispers say, and the word contains images of campfires and forest fires and engines and furnaces- and Randall gets it.

“You’re the combustion reaction,” he says, and from the flickers in the embers gets back a vague impression of amusement and ’ _eh, close enough_ ’

“Are you- does it hurt you to stop?”

The whispers don’t understand what he means.

“You can’t burn forever!” he says. “You have to stop eventually, or else you might start a forest fire and hurt lots of people.”

The whispers don’t understand what he means.

“You- you need to change things to exist. You ARE that change, more or less. But sometimes that hurts things.”

 _Fuel,_ the things in the fire whisper, _fuel for burning fuEL FUEL eat burn liVE EAT BURN F U E L”_

The embers roar back up into flames and the remnants of a log break, falling into the fire and sending up a cloud of sparks, each whispering about fuel, about burning, about life, until in handfuls and pairs and one by one, they go out.

The forest is dark around him, and for a long moment it seems like nothing else exists in the world but him and the glow of the fire. The fire is all that he is and ever will be, all that ever has or will exist, and it pulses and writhes and whispers about life and death and fuel, fuel _fuEL_

He reaches towards it, unsure if he wants to see the shadows play against his skin or if he wants to grab the fire, hold the fire, feed the fire-

The wind shifts, and Randall breathes in smoke and coughs. Jans snores in the tent, and branches rustle overhead, and the wind is cold on the back of his neck where his uniform doesn’t reach. Randall runs his hand through his hair, then puts it back on his knee.

“Sometimes things don’t want to be burned.” Randall says, looking into the darkness and letting his watering eyes rest. “Sometimes those things will put you out instead. They’ll- they’ll stop you. They’ll stop the burning.”

 _burn?_ the fire asks.

“No.” Randall says. “Not forever.”

_buRN?_

“No! You’ll hurt things! You’ll hurt me, and my friends, and this planet, and-“

_end? dIE?_

“I- yeah. Yeah. So you don't hurt us, you’re gonna have to die.”

The embers flicker uneasily, but their glow is already noticeably reduced from earlier in the evening.

“Will you- will you go away for forever? If I put you out, if I stop you? Will it hurt you?”

The whispers consider this.

They decide it doesn’t matter.

They decide that this creature talking to them is small, and time-locked, and knows oh so little about burning, oh so little about fire and heat and the roaring majesty of conflagration, the intense satisfaction of changing, of rending atoms apart and reforging them into smoke, into ash, into gas and heat, of existing in that instant of transformation, that moment of potential where one thing becomes another. They decide that he is boring in his sameness, too foreign a type of life for them ever to understand.

Death? End? How can you end when you exist in all the moments that ever were, all the instants where oxygen and fuel and a spark combine and change and

They consider Randall, and his words, and decide to ignore him, chattering to themselves about gas and carbon and the redistributions of atoms, and things that a creature at once as small and vast as him could never hope to understand.

Randall breathes out a shaky breath, and reaches for the shovel propped up against his pack.

He will cover this fire with ash, and wake it up in the morning. They can put it out properly then.

~~~

When the mission is over and they’ve negotiated with the locals and everything has gone to hell and back at least six times but somehow worked out in the end, Randall finds himself alone in his quarters with a candle and a borrowed lighter. It takes him a handful of tries to get the wick to take, but finally the candle lights.

Randall stares into the flame, then takes a breath. “Dai Stiho.”

The candle flickers, and something inside it whispers _here_ _hEre whO?_

Randall smiles. “My name is Randall, and I greet you.”

The fire burns. 


End file.
